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  His horse reared high and Jamous looked desperately for that direction.

  “They’re cutting us off!” Markus yelled. “Jamous—”

  He knew then what the enemy had done. The bear had suffered the wolves’ attacks with patience, snarling and swiping as it always did. But today it had slowly, methodically drawn the wolves farther and farther into the desert, far enough so they wouldn’t see the flanking maneuver. Too far to outrun it.

  The Horde army closed in a hundred yards behind them. At the center a warrior held high their crest, the serpentine Shataiki bat. They were trapped.

  The Scabs nearest him suddenly fell back a hundred yards and joined the main army. His men had clustered to his right. Their horses snorted and stamped, worn from battle. No one demanded that he do something. There was little they could do.

  Except charge.

  The Horde line between them and the forest was their only real option. But it was already fifty yards wide, too many Scabs to cut through with fewer than two hundred men.

  Still, it was their only option. An image of Mikil flashed through his mind. They would say that he had fought like no man had ever fought, and she would carry his body to the funeral pyre.

  The Scab army had stopped now. The desert had fallen silent. They seemed content to let Jamous make the first move. They would simply adjust their noose in whichever direction he took them. The Horde army was learning.

  Martyn.

  Jamous faced his men, who’d formed a line facing the forest. “There’s only one way,” he said.

  “Straight at them,” Markus said.

  “Elyon’s strength.”

  “Elyon’s strength.”

  Maybe a few of them could cut through the wall to warn the village.

  “Spread the word. On my mark, straight ahead. If you make it, evacuate the village. They will be burning.”

  Had it really come down to this? One last suicide run?

  “You’re a good man, Jamous,” Markus said.

  “And you, Markus. And you.” They looked at each other. Jamous lifted his sword.

  “Rider! Behind!” The call came from down the line.

  Jamous twisted in his saddle. A lone rider raced across the desert from the east, half a mile distant. Dust rose in his wake.

  Jamous spun his horse. “Steady.”

  The rider was headed neither for them nor for the Desert Dwellers. He approached halfway between their position and the Horde army. A white horse.

  The sound of the pounding hoofs reached Jamous. He fixed his eyes on this one horse, thundering in from the desert like a blinded runner who’d gotten lost and was determined to deliver his message to the supreme commander at any cost.

  It was Justin of Southern.

  The man still wasn’t in proper battle dress. His hood flew behind him with loose locks. He rode on the balls of his feet as if he’d been born in that saddle. And in his right hand hung a sword, low and easy so that it looked like it might touch the sand at any moment.

  Jamous swallowed. This warrior had fought and won more battles than any living man except for Thomas himself. Although Jamous had never fought with him, they’d all heard of his exploits before he’d left the Guard.

  Justin suddenly veered toward the Horde army, leaned low on the far side of his horse, and lowered his sword into the sand. Still running full speed, he carved a line on the desert for a hundred yards before righting himself and pulling his mount to a stop.

  The white stallion reared and dropped back around.

  Justin galloped back, not once glancing at either army. The front ranks of the Horde shifted but held steady. He reined tight at the center of the line that he’d drawn and faced the Horde.

  The armies grew perfectly still.

  For several long seconds Justin stared ahead, his back to Jamous.

  “What’s he—”

  Jamous lifted a hand to quiet Markus.

  Justin swung his leg off his saddle and dropped to the ground. He walked up to the line and stopped. Then he deliberately stepped over the line and walked forward, sword dragging in the sand by his side. They could hear the soft crunch of sand under his feet. A horse down the line snorted.

  He was only a hundred feet from the main Horde army when he stopped again. This time he thrust his sword into the sand and took three steps back.

  His voice rang out across the desert. “I request to speak with the general named Martyn!”

  “What does he think he’s doing? He’s surrendering?”

  “I don’t know, Markus. We’re still alive.”

  “We can’t surrender! The Horde takes no prisoners.”

  “I think he aims to make peace.”

  “Peace with them is treason against Elyon!” Markus spit.

  Jamous glanced at the army to their rear. “Send one runner wide, to their eastern flank.”

  “Now?”

  “Yes. Let’s see if they let him pass.”

  Markus issued the order.

  Justin still faced the army, waiting. A rider broke from Jamous’s line and sprinted east, in much the same manner as Justin had. The Scabs made no move to stop him.

  “They’re letting him go.”

  “Good. Let’s see if—”

  “Now they’re stopping him.”

  The Scabs were closing the eastern flank. The rider pulled up and headed back.

  Jamous swore. “Well then, let’s see how far treason gets us.”

  As if on cue, the Horde army parted directly ahead. A lone general on a horse, wearing the black sash of his rank, rode slowly out to Justin. Martyn. Jamous could make out his bland Scab face beneath the hood, but not his features. He stopped ten feet from Justin’s sword.

  The soft rumbling of their voices carried across the desert, but Jamous couldn’t make out their words. Still they talked. Five minutes. Ten.

  The general Martyn suddenly slid from his horse, met Justin at the sword in the sand, and clasped Justin’s hands in the traditional forest greeting.

  “What?”

  “Hold your tongue, Markus. If we live to fight another day, we will drag him through his treason.”

  The general mounted, rode back to his men, and disappeared. A long horn blasted from the front line.

  “Now what?”

  Justin leaped into his saddle, spun his horse, and sprinted straight toward them. He’d come within twenty feet without slowing before it occurred to Jamous that he wasn’t going to.

  He cursed and jerked his horse to the left.

  He could see the mischievous glint in Justin’s emerald eyes as he blasted through the line and galloped toward the waiting Horde. Long before he met them, the Scab army parted and withdrew, first east and west, and then south like a receding tide on either side.

  Justin pulled up at the tree line.

  Jamous glanced back once, then kicked his horse. “Ride!”

  It wasn’t until he was halfway to Justin that Jamous remembered his agreement. The man had indeed rid him of the Horde, hadn’t he? Yes. Not by any means he’d imagined—not by any means he even understood—but he had. And for that at least, Justin was victor.

  Today the people would honor him.

  11

  “HE’S STILL sleeping?” Phil Grant asked.

  The frumpy doctor pushed the door to his lab open. “Like a baby. I insist that you let me study him further. This is highly unusual, you understand? I’ve never seen it.”

  “Can you unlock his dreams with more work?”

  “I don’t know what I can unlock, but I’m happy to try. Whatever’s happening in that mind of his must be scrutinized. Must.”

  “I’m not sure how much time we have for your musts,” Grant said. “We’ll see.”

  Kara walked in ahead of the two men. It struck her as odd that only two weeks ago she’d lived a quiet life as a nurse in Denver. Yet here she was, being traipsed about by the director of the CIA and a world-renowned cognitive psychologist, who were both looking to he
r brother for answers to perhaps the single greatest crisis that the United States had ever faced. That the world had ever faced.

  Thomas lay in a maroon recliner, lights low, while an orchestral version of “Killing Me Softly” whispered through ceiling speakers. She’d spent the afternoon putting their affairs in order: rent on their Denver apartment, insurance bills, a long call to Mother, who’d been climbing the walls with all the news about Thomas’s kidnapping of Monique. Depending on what happened in the next day or so, Kara thought she might fly to New York for a visit. The prospect of never seeing her mother again wasn’t sitting well. The scientists were all talking as though the virus wouldn’t wreak havoc for another eighteen days, but really it could be less. Seventeen. Sixteen. The models were only so accurate. There was every possibility that they all had less than three weeks to live.

  “So he’s been sleeping for three hours without dreaming?”

  Dr. Myles Bancroft walked to the monitor and tapped it lightly. “Let me put it this way. If he is dreaming, it’s not like any dream I’ve ever seen. No rapid eye movement. No perceptual brain activity, no fluctuation in facial temperature. He’s in deep sleep, but his dreams are quiet.”

  “So the whole notion of recording his dream patterns and feeding them back . . .”

  “Is a nonstarter,” the psychologist finished.

  Grant shook his head. “He looks so . . . ordinary.”

  “He’s far from ordinary,” Kara said.

  “Evidently. It’s just hard to imagine that the fate of the world is hung up somewhere in this mind. We know that he discovered the Raison Strain—the idea that he has the antivirus hidden in that mind somewhere is a bit unnerving, considering that he’s never had a day of medical training in his life.”

  “Which is why you must let me spend more time with him,” Bancroft repeated.

  They stared at him in silence.

  “Wake him,” Kara said.

  Bancroft shook Thomas gently. “Wake up, lad.”

  Thomas’s eyes blinked open. Funny how she rarely thought of him as Tom anymore. He was Thomas now. It suited him better.

  “Welcome to the land of the living,” the doctor said. “How do you feel?”

  He sat up. Wiped at his eyes. “How long have I been asleep?”

  “Three hours.”

  THOMAS LOOKED around the lab. Three hours. It felt like more.

  “What happened?” Kara asked.

  They were staring at him expectantly. “Did it work?” he asked.

  “That’s what we were wondering,” Bancroft said.

  “I don’t know. Did you record my dreams?”

  “Did you dream?”

  “I don’t know, did I? Or am I dreaming now?”

  Kara sighed. “Please, Thomas.”

  “Okay, then yes, of course I dreamed. I returned to the forest with my army after destroying the Horde—the black powder worked wonders—met with the Council, then fell asleep after joining the celebration with Rachelle.”

  He slid his feet to the floor and stood. “And I’m dreaming now, which means I didn’t eat the fruit. She’ll have my hide.”

  “Who’ll have your hide?” Grant asked.

  “His wife. Rachelle,” Kara said.

  The director looked at her with a raised brow.

  “And I asked about the Books of Histories,” Thomas said. “I know the man who may be able to tell me where to find them.”

  “But you don’t remember anything more about the antivirus,” Grant pressed.

  “No. Your little experiment failed, remember? You can’t stimulate my memory banks because you can’t record the brain signatures associated with my dreams because I’m not dreaming. That pretty much summarizes it, doesn’t it, Doctor?”

  “Perhaps, yes. Fascinating. We could be on the verge of a whole new world of understanding here.”

  Phil Grant shook his head. “Okay, Gains is right. From this point forward we’ve got to keep this dream-talk to a minimum. We keep the story straight and simple. You have a gift. You’re seeing things that haven’t happened yet. That’s hard enough to buy, but at least there’s precedent for it. In the light of our situation, enough people will at least give a prophet a chance. But the rest of this—your wife, Rochel or whatever her name is, your war council, the Horde, the fruit you didn’t eat—all of it, strictly off-limits to anyone except me and Gains.”

  “You want to pitch me as some kind of mystical prophet?” Thomas said. “I’m not as optimistic as you. It’ll do nothing for my leverage in the international community. Outside of this room I’m simply a person who may know more about the situation at hand than anyone else in this government because of my association with Monique. I was the last one to speak to her before she was taken. I’m the only one who has engaged the terrorists, and I’m the only one who has accurately anticipated their next move. Considering all of that, I am a man who should be taken very seriously. Judging the rather . . . lukewarm reception I got from the others in the meeting today, I think that might make more sense.”

  “I won’t disagree,” Grant said. “Are you anticipating the need for leverage in the international community?”

  Thomas walked past him, his sense of urgency swelling. “Who knows? One way or another we’ve got to beat this thing. I can’t believe the Books of Histories still exist! If I can get to them . . .”

  He stopped. “I have to know something.” Thomas faced them, eyes wide. “I have to know if this cut on my shoulder came from Carlos or from the Horde. In my dreams, that is.”

  They stared at him without offering any bold statements of support.

  “From Carlos,” Kara finally said.

  “But you didn’t see him cut me, right? I was already bleeding when you came into the room. No, I really need to know. They’re insisting that the Horde cut me.”

  “How . . . can you prove it either way?”

  “Yes. Cut me.” He stuck out his arm. “Make a small incision and I’ll see if I have it when I wake up.”

  All three blinked.

  “Just give me the knife then.”

  Bancroft stepped to a drawer, opened it, and withdrew scissors. “Well, I have these—”

  “You’re not serious, are you?” Grant demanded.

  Thomas took the scissors and drew their sharp tip along his forearm. He had to understand the rules of engagement. “Just a small scratch. For me. I have to know.” He winced and handed the scissors back.

  “You’re suggesting that more than what’s in your mind is transferred between realities?” the doctor asked.

  “Of course,” he said. “I’m there and I’m here. Physically. That’s more than knowledge or skills. My wounds show up in both realities. My blood. Life. Nothing else. My mind and my life. On the other hand, my aging doesn’t show here. I’m younger here.”

  “This . . . this is absolutely incredible,” the doctor said.

  Thomas faced Grant. “So what’s our status?”

  The director took awhile to answer. “Well . . . the president’s directed FEMA to direct all of its resources to work with the Centers for Disease Control, and he’s brought in the World Health Organization. They’ve now confirmed the virus in thirty-two airports.”

  “What about the search for Monique? The rest may be pointless unless we find her.”

  “We’re working on it. The governments of Britain, Germany, France, Thailand, Indonesia, Brazil . . . a dozen others are pulling out the stops.”

  “Switzerland?”

  “Naturally. I may not be able to predict a virus, or battle the Horde, but I do know how to look for fugitives in the real world.”

  “Svensson’s gone deep, into a hole somewhere that he prepared a long time ago. One that no one will think to look in. Like the one outside of Bangkok.”

  “Which you found how?”

  Thomas glanced at Kara.

  “Could you do that again?” she asked. “The world’s changed, but that doesn’t mean Rachelle isn’t so
mehow connected to Monique, right?”

  Thomas didn’t respond. What if he was wrong? He was still Thomas Hunter, the failed writer from Denver. What right did he have advising the CIA? The stakes were astronomical.

  On the other hand, he had been right more than once. And he had battled the Horde successfully for fifteen years. That earned him something, as the president had said.

  “Will someone please explain?” Grant asked.

  Kara faced him. “Rachelle, Thomas’s dream-wife, inadvertently led him to Monique the first time. She seemed to know where Monique was being kept. But she became jealous of Monique, because she realized that Thomas was falling in love with her here. So she refused to help him again. It’s why he agreed not to dream for fifteen years.”

  “I must be given more time,” Bancroft murmured. “You’re in love with two different women, one from each reality?”

  “That’s a stretch,” Thomas said.

  It was a thing that Thomas had been trying to squash ever since he’d awakened from the fifteen-year dream, but it lingered there in the back of his mind. It seemed absurd that he would have any feelings for Monique at all. Yes, they’d faced death together, and she’d kissed him as a matter of her own survival. He did find her fiery spirit attractive, and her face refused to budge from his mind’s eye. But maybe Rachelle’s jealousy was what triggered his romantic feelings for Monique in the first place. Maybe he wouldn’t have started to fall for her if Rachelle hadn’t suggested that he was falling for her.

  Now, after fifteen years with Rachelle, any romantic notions he might once have felt for Monique had vanished.

  “The whole thing is more than a stretch,” Grant said, “starting with your prediction of the Raison Strain. But these are now facts, aren’t they? So you get to your Books of Histories and you get to Rachelle and you convince her to help us here. Meaning you sleep and you dream.”

  He shook his head and started for the door. “With any luck you’ll have something more sensible to tell the president when you meet with him tomorrow.”

  THEY’D MOVED her again. Where, she had no clue.

  Monique de Raison stared at the monitor, mind taxed, eyes burning.

  It had been less than twenty-four hours since they’d put a sack over her head for the second time in as many days and led her into a car, then onto an airplane. The flight had lasted several hours—she could be anywhere. Hawaii, China, Argentina, Germany. She might have been able to figure out the region by any stray conversation she overheard, but they’d stuffed wax in her ears and taped them. She couldn’t even determine the temperature or humidity, because they’d landed during a rainstorm that had wet her hood before she’d been shoved into another car and brought here.